


The Forever Broken

by teabox



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: A bit of sadness, Complete, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Falling In Love, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:42:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23547829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teabox/pseuds/teabox
Summary: For a long time she thought love stories were full of cliché, fairly predictable while bordering on the side of boring. And love, most often than not, a variation on a theme of misunderstood emotions.Sam, on the other hand, never passed an occasion to have a try, fully knowing that the extent of his commitment was generally the duration of this or that job. Love was mostly a word and only occasionally almost as good as the thrill of an adventure.And then they met each other.
Relationships: Samuel Drake/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. Saint Something of the Lost Causes

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and thank you for stopping by!  
> The story that follows is a bit of an experiment and hasn't been beta read. Apologies.  
> It's not too long (four chapters pretty much ready to go) and it's weird, but I do hope that in these peculiar times we are going through, somebody may want to read it and hopefully find a little bit of an escape.  
> Thank you!

_“[…] et eunt homines mirari alta montium, et ingentes fluctus maris, et latissimos lapsus fluminum, et Oceani ambitum, et gyros siderum, et relinquunt se ipso […]”_

“[…] and men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by […]”

St. Augustine, _Confessions_

This she can tell you.

That the first time she sees Samuel Drake, she thinks him different.

Other people prior to him have tried to waltz in her life thinking that they could use her, her connections, her money—slightly different wordings every time, variations on well abused speeches, same old wearied patterns. By the time Sam comes into her life, she can easily recognize poisoned gestures and affectations. She may be young, but she is not stupid.

And then, Sam.

Sam, with nothing but a smile. A light and a sadness in his eyes. Sam with a story, with a past carefully crafted, Sam of incredible adventures and laughs and birds on his neck.

“A story for another time,” he had told her once.

He comes offering to help.

She didn’t ask it, but she accepts it nonetheless.

Maybe because in a well constructed network of whispers and favors that need to be called in and loyalties that seem to change every minute or so, Sam shows up without asking too much in return. He doesn’t want money. He doesn’t want secrets that can be used against someone. He doesn’t want access to anything or anyone. He doesn’t even necessarily want her.

“What you are looking for,” he says on their first meeting, “it’s in Morocco. I can get it for you, if you can give me a passage there. And a fake passport, if it’s not too inconvenient.”

His voice modulated to amusement. A corner of his mouth teased up.

But mostly what she remembers of that day is the rain. Wet fingers tapping on the glass roof and walls of the solarium in her country house, a background music of some sort. Sam with sunglasses on, nonetheless.

Maybe she should have taken a hint from that. But she didn’t.

Sam is disarming. Different and unreadable. Completely unexpected. That day, now she knows, the axis of her world shifted a degree around him. Quietly. Stealthy.

On the private flight to Rabat they sit on opposite sides of the aisle. Not too close, not too far. “A polite amount of personal space”, he would later tease her, after things like politeness and personal spaces would have been long forgotten.

But there, on that flight, she still sits enough away from him, unconsciously waiting for him to close his eyes so she can look at him and compile bits. She always had the soul of a collector, after all.

Rabat with its noises, colors and scents commandeers Sam for almost a week.

In her hotel suite, she waits for him to come back and when he finally does, blood and dirt stain his clothes, his skin, his mind.

Yet, he laughs his way into her room, handling her what she asked for—out of the back pocket of his jeans like some sort of magic trick—and sits down on an immaculate sofa, only to apologize for the mess when already too late.

_This is what this man is like_ , she remembers thinking then. Truth is, she was so far off the mark. At least now she knows that much. But then—back then—she thought she had him all figured out.

Samuel Drake of the easy laughs, of the shaking off accidents and pain like dust, of the always a moment too late apologies. Careless, carefree, childlike.

Wrong.

At least partially so.

Back home, she quickly finds him another job. And then another. And then another.

There are several things that she wouldn’t admit to anyone, but if nothing else, she can at least still pride herself on never have lied to herself about liking Sam.

A first aid kit, a shower, a change of clothes and a good meal turn pretty quickly into a routine. He seems to never take it for granted, though. It’s only on the fourth or the fifth time that he finally looks at her curiously.

“What?” she asks picking a fry from his plate.

He has this way of sitting, everywhere and no matter what. Relaxed, cool, as if he owned everything around him and he is perfectly comfortable with the idea and thank you very much.

“This,” he says, staring at her for a moment before steering his eyes away. “It’s nice. Thank you. But you don’t have to do it. I don’t expect it.”

“You prefer me not to?” she asks softly.

One of his hands reaches the back of his neck, his gaze finds the ceiling of the room. “No. I mean, I really appreciate. I just don’t want you to feel obliged.”

She steals another fry from his plate. “I don’t.”

A heartbeat passes by quietly. “Okay.”

In the silence that follows his eyes find hers again. A chuckle escapes his mouth almost immediately, notes of awkwardness and a peculiar shyness mixed in.

She likes it. She likes it a lot.

Maybe too much.

As far as she can remember, she has never been a particularly shy person. Pretty much like many others, outgoing when needed, reserved by preference, guarded a degree more than many, maybe. It came with the upbringing, she believes. Imprinting.

In this regard, she is not sure when Sam started to look at her in that way that made her blush and feel nervous and aroused all at the same time, but she remembers the first time she had noticed.

He shows up with some informations about a piece she asked him to find, but he hasn’t messaged her ahead, so he catches her on her way out to an event.She is wearing a simple evening dress and heels, nothing fancy but different enough from her usual look of jeans, sneakers and plain tees.And she sees it in Sam’s eyes, as he unconsciously allows them to travel along her figure to meet up with her eyes, she sees it then and there. A bit of bewilderment, a measure of hunger.

For a man who lies so often, he has never been too good at hiding emotions.

And then he must have seen the surprise coloring her face. Something raw enough to make him feel exposed. So Sam does what Sam always does best. He quickly scrambles together an excuse and finds an exit.

Later that day she marvels at the easiness of that shift. How suddenly he has been forced to recognize her as a woman. And later that evening she touches herself thinking of him, the way he had looked at her and his hands and his voice and all the things she has been craving to do to him and wishes he would do to her.

He disappears for more than a month after that day. Two weeks in, she sends him a message. He doesn’t reply.

When he reappears into her life, he’s unanticipated. Unasked, really. _Again_ , she would like to add.

She is at a fundraising ball and auction event and he is not there until he suddenly is.She wasn’t mingling to being with and most of her evening is wasted on the sidelines anyway, but at that point in her sentimental life Samuel Drake is slowly decaying into the shadow of a mistake she could have gladly lost herself into, hadn’t he decided to remove himself from her life. And yet, in an excellent example of incredibly bad timing, exactly when she has just started to think of him less, he decides to reappear.

_You don’t get to do that_ , she would like to tell him. But she doesn’t. Of course, she doesn’t.

Dressed up in a sharp black tie, Samuel Drake looks like a million dollars. To her, he feels like a freshly shuffled deck of cards. You know all the suits and colors, but you don’t recognize the order. And so, Sam. His smile, his eyes, his voice ( _his voice_ ). And still, it’s hard for her to reassemble everything the way she knows it. Sam, like a photo slightly out of focus, familiar yet different.

“You look beautiful,” he says, his voice vaguely catching on the last word.

“You look well and alive,” she replies before she can erase the sharpness out of her tone.

He has the decency to look embarrassed.

“I’m sorry for—,” he starts and then stops as he takes a step towards her and she instinctively takes a step back. He looks surprised. Maybe a bit hurt.

She hopes so.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“It’s okay,” she lies.

And then the song. A tune slow and sad and blue as it can be stretches between the two of them and all she can do—as she feels his eyes on her slowly charting a map of all her exposed fragilities—all she can do is look away, fidgeting with the two old bracelets she wears all the time.

“Would you like to dance?”

An unscripted question. So out of character, really.

She catches a laugh before it escapes her throat. _Yes. No. What gives you the right._

But she meets his eyes—and maybe that’s her first true mistake of the evening—and holds them for a moment long enough to convince herself that she can safely say yes.

And it’s not when he takes one of her hands in his as the other finds its way to her back that she understands how lost she still really is. Or when he pulls her a little bit closer, enough for her to feel the warmth of Sam’s body. Not even then she gets it. It’s when she catches herself thinking of him reentering her life carrying the air of the evening with him, the wetness of a storm close by and a faint smell of smoke. Things that she missed. That she misses.

She registers some new scratches on the knuckles of his fingers and hints of healing wounds that his shirt doesn’t hide well enough. How much of Samuel Drake, she wonders, and what new parts of him, what other stories he has been adding to the list of the things that she is never going to know about him. That she would like to know.

And so, then and there, she finally sees it—her hearth suspended again because of one Samuel Drake.

His thumb caresses the skin of her hand slowly, a distraction as she tries to put together the pieces of a man who likes to be a puzzle.

The song fills the empty spaces where their words should be with lyrics that pull strings inside her that she would prefer to be left alone.

But, if nothing else, she will ask him something.

“Is this a goodbye?”

And if she was older or wiser or maybe just not so ridiculous, her voice would be less insecure and she would look up at him as her question comes out.

She can feel him trying to read her face and giving up, diverting his gaze somewhere else. “I… I don’t think so.”

The halo of a question mark tints his reply and she knows that this answer is probably the most honest answer he could have ever given her.

And then, in the dim lighted fringe of where most of the other people are dancing, unexpected like almost everything around and of Sam, he starts to talk.

A confession of shortcomings and sins and mistakes that, she is quite sure of it, he lays at her feet to listen to, so that she can walk away from him.

All the “my life is a mess”, the “I am a mess” and the “you are young”, the “you are smart”, the “trust me, you don’t want me in your life”.

And of all the arguments he tries to make, he doesn’t see that that one is the faultiest.And of all the times he needs to stop talking, he doesn’t realize that this one is the one. So, she makes him. Her hand reaches the side of his neck, the thumb barely touches his jawline and the rough prelude of stubble. He finally stops talking, holds his breath, stays still. And so she kisses him.

There is this moment. A heartbeat that goes by fully noticed by her in which she waits for Sam’s reaction. And then it passes and he closes the space between them, his mouth on hers again in a kiss that has no questions in it and no hesitations. He kisses her and does it so like a man who has kissed many women in his life and liked all of them. And yet, he also kisses her with all the contradictions of a first kiss, tender and hungry, tentative and claiming. Gravity—for one impossible moment—feels weaker.

Sam’s skin is traced with lines and marks of stories, some of which he tells her later that night in the quiet of her bedroom. The bedsheets are tangled around their legs, their bodies close enough to touch, one of his hands plays carefully a game of exploration on her back.Her bracelets slide a little down her arm as she raises one hand to follow the line of a wrinkle on his forehead.The bruises, the cuts, the broken bones—all of that she can easily explain. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, after all. But it’s these marks of passing time and worries and laughs that she is mostly curious of. These secret thoughts and unconfessed memories that left their impressions on him and made him the man she is staring at right now.

His hand leaves her back to caress her temple and then to hide on the back of her neck. She closes her eyes as he kisses her on the forehead. “We should really get some rest, now.”

She nods already drifting away and sleep, when it comes, scents like Sam.

The week that follows is mostly lost in bed with Sam, discovering what each other’s hands, mouths and bodies can do. When they are not making love, he meticulously extracts stories from her past, things she has never said to anybody else, or they talk about history and collections and artifacts and places Sam has seen, yet still sounding so improbable.

His phone is mostly forgotten on her nightstand, he only picks it up to answer to the random call from his brother or his friend Sully. She rolls those names—Nate and Sully—in her head musing how weird is to know so many details about two people she has never met. She is fairly sure he hasn’t mentioned her to them. The few times she catches bits and pieces of his conversations on the phone, Sam seems to always say things like “I’m kinda busy right now” or “I’m in the middle of something”. She is okay with that. After all, it’s not like she has told about him to anybody, either.

At the beginning of a new week, after a quick phone call with Sully, Sam tells her that he needs to go somewhere for few days. He doesn’t say where or why and she doesn’t ask. He wraps his arms around her waist and lifts her up, their faces at the same level for few moments.

“Hey, you,” she says chuckling.

“Hey, you. I will miss you.”

He gives her a quick kiss on the lips and puts her down before she even has the time to reply anything. And with that and a wave from the front door, Sam is gone.

Few days become a week, a week becomes two. He calls her, though. Sends her messages. His voice carries the noises of some other place, some other life, some other secret.

Upon his return, Sam’s mood and demeanor have slightly shifted. It’s in the way he hugs her, the way his eyes seem to avoid hers, the cheerfulness in his voice that sounds a bit forced, how he tries to reroute her attention to anything else but him.

But that night in bed he is deliberately slow, taking his time to retrace all her body, exploring all her curves and lines like it’s the first time, tasting bit by bit every inch of her, making sure that all she can feel is pleasure.

After, Sam lays on his side, an elbow propped up, one hand supporting his head, the other carefully touching the bracelets on her wrist.

“How old are these?”

“Ptolemaic.”

Sam laughs. “Are you kidding me? And you wear them?”

“They were meant to be worn,” she replies in tune, gently shaking her arm to make them rattle. “First thing I ever acquired. They came with a necklace, too. A bit too much for me, though.”

Sam’s fingers reach her collarbones and lazily outline their shape. “A bit too much, uh?”

“It’s more like an armor, really.”

“So,” he says with a hint of something feral in his voice and a smile on a dangerous angle. “Let me guess.”

His fingers leave her collarbones and slowly caress a path down her cleavage until they stop at the beginning of her breasts.

“How about this long?”

“A little lower,” she replies breathless.

“A little lower,” Sam repeats with a devilish smile as his fingers move a couple of inches down. “And, let’s say, this wide?”

He deliberately traces an arc on the skin of her breasts brushing her nipples, making her catch her breath. “And one plaque?”

“Three,” she manages to say.

“ _Ah_. Three, then.”

She does everything that she can not to moan when Sam moves on top of her.

“It must be one plaque here,” he tells her kissing her between her breasts. “And one here,” he adds capturing one of her nipples with his mouth, “and the third one here,” he finishes capturing the other.

Her hands reach his head and hide in his hair as he slowly kisses his way down her stomach.

“Quite an accurate guess,” she tells him in between short lived breaths. “I’ll have to show it to you one of these days.”

Sam pauses for a long moment, his lips still hovering on her skin. “Not tonight,” he finally says before returning his mouth to her stomach.

_Not tonight_ , she agrees. She has no opportunity to say it, though, because all she can do in that moment is enjoying the pure bliss of Sam’s skilled tongue between her legs.

“It was between the wine and the collection,” she tells him as, in the basement, she punches her code on the keypad next to a set of double doors. “So you know.”

She gestures him to open them and a long, low whistle escapes Sam’s mouth once he sees what those doors have been hiding. Glass cases upon glass cases of carefully protected artifacts preserved for the benefit of very few people. Mostly hers, to be completely honest.

“Jesus Christ,” she hears Sam say under his breath.

She knows she technically doesn’t have to explain to him that the location of her vault had been simply dictated by the fact that, like fine wine, a lot of the pieces in her collection benefit form a strictly controlled temperature and light source, but she still fights the urge to. Anyway, he is too busy looking around to listen to her.

“What is all this stuff?”

She shrugs. “Unwanted pieces. I generally wait for the end of auctions and see what is leftover and buy something then.”

Sam shoots her an amused look and she shrugs again. “I feel bad for them.”

He laughs. The sound fills the room, somehow.

“And there she is,” Sam says, reaching the case with the necklace. “It’s even more beautiful than—” He stops, catches her eyes.

By his side, she tries to look at it as if it was the first time. The gold plaques and pendants shine bright under the spotlights and yet, somehow, they still make the gemstones shine even brighter, even better. In a riot of colors, rubies and emeralds and sapphires mix in a geometric pattern around unrecognizable engraved symbols.

“A bit too much,” she says.

“A bit too much,” he agrees.

Sam steals another look at the necklace, before turning his attention to her. “Wine?” he asks.

“You are not a wine kind of guy,” she points out in half a laugh.

“Then, wine for you and beer for me,” he replies.

And with his hands hidden inside the pockets of his jeans, his shoulders slightly hunched and an easy smile on his lips, it’s so easy—too easy—for her to picture what Samuel Drake must have looked like around her age.

Something a bit painful tightens around her heart, like the regret of not having had the chance to meet him back then.

“Are you okay?” he asks catching something on her face.

She nods. “Yes. Let’s have that drink.”

A week later, the necklace is gone.

The alarm never kicked in. No signs of intrusion.

_Of course_ , she thinks to herself. After all, he knew exactly how the alarm system worked. She had told him. And he had seen the combination number, she had never hid it from him.

Sam, that is. Who else.

And slowly but certainly something crumbles and falls inside her.

The tears come later. And they don’t stop for a long while.


	2. Our Lady of the Shattered Pieces

_“omnes enim peccaverunt et egent gloriam Dei”_

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”

Romans 3:23

These things he would confess.

He gets in contact with her only because it’s an easy job. One that he can do without an issue, on the side of what he really needs to go to Rabat for. On top of that, he has been told that she has the money and the means to make the journey back and forth uncomplicated.

On their first meeting he expects some rich, possibly bored woman and what he gets instead is something caught between a girl and a woman, wearing an obviously well loved t-shirt and a pair of fading jeans.She sits on a wicker chair, her legs crossed, a book held in one hand, the other tapping a rhythm in tune with the rain that hits the roof of the room.As she notices his presence, she turns to look at him, holds his gaze without necessarily showing any emotions, offers a standard smile.

“Mr Drake,” she says standing up.

And in the undiscovered land between his expectations and this reality, Sam sees it for the first time. The sign of someone who grew up with money.It’s in the straight line of her back, which speaks of being brought up with constant reminders of one’s posture. It’s in her tone of voice, perfectly modulated to a generic politeness because “this is how it’s done”. It’s in her choice of words, as in referring to him as Mr Drake instead of a less formal Samuel Drake.

Put it differently, she is everything the nuns tried and failed to make out of Sam and that maybe he would have become, had him been born with money instead of being brought up in an orphanage.

“Would you like to seat?”

Her voice is pretty and yet to a degree dissonant with the control she has on her facial expressions. It takes him a moment to figure it out. She is guarded and she shows it better on her face than in her voice, because she is still learning how not to be young.

He sits where she pointed, a comfortable chair like hers, right in front of this curious creature.

“Coffee? Tea?”

“I’m good, thanks,” Sam replies holding back an amused smile. Something tells him she would read it as him patronizing her and she wouldn’t like it a bit. “Do you mind if…?” He raises his cigarette pack for her to see.

She lets a brief moment pass. “By all means,” she then replies sitting down. Her legs are crossed again, her back still straight, the book she has been reading hidden between her and the arm of the chair. He shelters a smile while lighting a cigarette. In a small detail like that he is unexpectedly reminded of Nate.

She has been openly observing him all the time and frankly he doesn’t mind.

“So,” he says staring back at her, “I’ve heard you would like to have something that it’s currently in someone else’s possession.”

His wording obviously amuses her, because the hint of a smile shows up on her mouth. “Something like that.”

Sam takes a long drag on his cigarette, wondering how hard it’s going to be to try to convince her to let him take the job. “What you are looking for it’s in Morocco,” he says leaning towards her. “I can get it for you, if you can give me a passage there. And a fake passport, if it’s not too inconvenient.”

“How do you know it’s there?” she asks him.

Reaching for the pocket of his jacket, Sam extract an envelope and passes it to her and as she opens it and go through the photos it contains, he decides it’s his turn to observe her—especially since she is too busy to notice.

It’s hard to say how old she may be, but she is pretty and in that dangerous kind of way that certain women can be, when they don’t know or don’t recognize or are not completely comfortable with themselves. Some of her hair escapes the spot behind the ear where she tucked it, but she seems too busy going through the photos to notice or care.

Her eyes move slowly on the pictures, registering details patiently. Whatever she is thinking, she is not showing. She holds the last photo up, shielding her face for a long moment and when she puts it down with the others, Sam can tell her mind is made up.

“Okay,” she simply says.

Sam smiles. Simple answers are his favorites.

On the threshold of the glass doors that open to the balcony of his hotel suite, Sam takes in the noises and scents of a late evening in Rabat. His hair is still wet from the shower he took after coming back from his little expedition, the cuts have been disinfected and bandaged and a cold beer and a cigarette are taking care of pretty much everything else. Behind him, the lights in the room are turned off and from the advantageous point of view that the balcony provides, the city shows off to him in a specular way. The job went as well and, for once, as smooth as he had expected and with that done, he can simply relax and catch a good night of sleep before going back home the next day.

He takes a last drag on the cigarette replaying for the third time in his mind the look on her face when he had given her what she had paid for. A pity that a girl with such a pretty smile wouldn’t show it more often. As he puts the cigarette out and moves to go back inside the room, the doors on the balcony next to his open and—as if called by his own thoughts—she walks out.Somewhat glad that she doesn’t seem to have noticed him, Sam instinctively steps a bit further in the darkness. Why, he really prefers not ask himself at the present time. But as she reaches the railing and rests her elbows on it, he lets his eyes travel on her exposed legs, on the skin of her arms and what of her back is left uncovered by a loose tank top.What of the breeze that finds its way up there plays gently with her hair and what of the light of a moon that shows up between the clouds dances on her skin.

It’s not the first time that Sam thinks her pretty. Of course it is not. But it’s the first time that he feels a certain kind of hunger for her and because it shows up so quickly and so unexpectedly, he has no time to avoid it or rationalize it or simply deny it.

He will learn, though.

Few months and several jobs for her later, her defenses are mostly gone around him, which unfortunately translates in much more complicated scenarios for Sam to deal with, while trying to pretend that the attraction he feels for her is not there.Sitting cross-legged next to him like a pretty lotus, one of her knees is distractingly touching his leg as he tries very hard not to notice and focus instead on the file that she has put together for him.

“Bullshit,” she tells him laughing.

“I swear it’s true,” he replies chuckling, “they were standing there, among the rest of Avery’s treasure. I’ve seen them. Three. On his ship.”

“Right,” she says sarcastically picking up a photo from the folder on his lap. “This one-of-a-kind-gold-and-gems-crusted-bearing-King-Charles-II’s-sigil candlestick. You saw _three_ of them.”

“On Avery’s ship,” he adds matter-of-factly.

She leans towards him to look better at his face. “ _Bullshit_.”

“Watch your language, young lady,” he pushes her back amused, “and have more respect for your elders.”

She chuckles as she stretches to take her glass of wine from the coffee table in front of them, leaving to Sam a moment to wonder what this is. What is with her. Her way of being with him, his way of feeling for her.

As she goes back to relax against the back of the sofa, she quickly glances at him. “So, do you think you can get it?”

“This?” asks Sam flicking the photo of the candlestick she is still holding. “Do I think I can get it? _Please_.”

He waits for her reply, but instead finds her staring at him like she often does.

“What?”

“Nothing. Cheers.”

She hides her face in a sip of wine, the beginning of a blush on her cheeks that leaves Sam to wonder.

There is this woman—he met her a long time ago—that, for reasons Sam will never understand, seems always happy to have him in her bed. Her name is Ani, short for something he never really cared to ask for. And that night, in the middle of sex with Ani, instead of enjoying the woman that he has, his brain decides to fantasize about the one he doesn’t and how she would taste in his mouth and how her skin would feel under his hands and how she would feel on top him and how it would feel to be inside her.And since he can’t seem to find a way to stop his thoughts, Sam has sex with Ani pretending she is someone else instead. And later, when all is left is the shadow of a postcoital misplaced sentiment and some warmth, Sam thinks of her and tries to hide the draws of a wanting that could easily be his biggest mistake to date.

“I tried to find more informations about it, but I couldn’t really find that much,” she says apologetic.

Sam looks at the blurry photo of an engraved stone—a ruby, maybe—and then looks back at her. “I’ve already seen something like this before. I’ll have to search through my stuff, though.” He pauses. “Do you want to come?” he then surprises himself asking.

She seems equally taken aback, but she recovers quickly. “Sure. Thank you.”

He stopped some time ago to wonder what she is going to think about everything or anything that surrounds or belongs to him, but still when she climbs into his Jeep that, like him, has seen better days, Sam casts a quick glance at her. She is smiling, which is always nice.So he starts driving.Her arms are folded on her lap, the short pants she is wearing reveal skin her hands are casually touching but that his hands are craving to feel. The radio plays a song he doesn’t know but that she hums along with. And as he takes the longer, more scenic route to his place, the sun is setting in a glorious spectacle of oranges, pinks and reds.And life fora moment is very close to feel perfect.

He tries to look at his place through her eyes. Some discarded shirts and jeans on his bed—but honestly, nothing close to the mess Nate can do—and piles of books and old trinkets along walls cluttered with photos, maps, annotations and pinned articles about things he hasn’t heard of or hasn’t discovered just yet. She walks slowly and carefully in his space. Her fingertips cautiously trace the outlines of his desk, his bookcase, his abandon glass with still some whisky in it. He hates to admit this, but he likes the way she looks in this mess. Like she belongs. Like she is meant to be here, in the middle of all of this. 

He sees her pausing in front of a photo and then chuckling pointing at it. “Is this you?”

Sam stops right behind her to look at what she is talking about. He echos her laugh when he is faced with two much younger himself and Nate. “Yes, that’s me. And this odd looking young thing is my little brother.” 

He stretches an arm over her shoulder to reach the photo and—even if she tries to hide it—he can feel her tensing.

And this moment comes.

This moment in which he could say something and the situation—for better or for worst—would evolve between them. But, like a very poorly scripted movie, the moment comes and goes without Sam doing or saying anything. And next things he knows, she moves away and it’s too late.

“I’ll search for your stone,” he is left to say, his hand reaching the back of his neck. “I’m pretty sure there is something about it in one of these books.”

She nods without looking, her eyes trained to a window that she opens to let the noises of the outside in. It’s a brief passing moment stained with a hue of melancholy the one that makes him wish that he could, as easily as the noises through that window, let her in in his life.

In retrospect, he should have recognized that something was wrong simply because she was talking. Not that she usually wouldn’t—especially around him—but generally her words were thought, weighted and inspected before she would let them go.But here instead they flow out of her mouth quickly, toppling and sliding onto each others at times, while her fingers trace patterns in the air that only she can see.

“How much have you been drinking?” he asks quietly.

She looks at him, her head tilted on one side, before gifting him an unguarded laugh. “A bit. I’m celebrating, you see.”

“May I ask what?”

She hesitates. Her eyes move quickly like she is looking for the answer in the space of the room and maybe finds it. “A very bad day.”

Maybe she waits for Sam’s reply in another sip of wine or maybe she doesn’t. And he would like to tell her he understands—very well, actually—but he also knows that whatever he may offer to her, she probably wouldn’t want to hear anyway. So he watches her making her unsteadily way to where he is sitting, ready to catch her if necessary, her glass of wine full again.Her head finds his shoulder and rests there, her hair tickling his neck. And for that evening Sam allows himself to be the keeper of all her secret damaged pieces, her broken pain, her own complicated stories.

She doesn’t remember any of it the next day.

But he does and it haunts him for nights on end.

It’s all over her face, when he gets caught so off guard by her that he forgets to hide what he feels, and it reflects on the blush on her face, the surprised look, the mouth slightly parted. She finally sees the weight of the desire he is been carrying with him for so long now and really, it’s not a question of possibilities or decisions. There is only one option before she can break him kindly. He needs to go, disappear, find something else, someone else, pretty much now.

Stealing and getting injured are welcomed penitences and since Sully can find him as many jobs as he wants, Sam gets them all.

His cellphone vibrates with the notification of a text and for a moment there is this stupid bubble of hope—the one message she has sent, he deleted it without even reading it. It’s not her again, though, but Sully sending him an article. “Wasn’t this one of your jobs?” he typed along with it.

Sam opens the attachment and the first thing he sees is a photo of an artifact that he indeed had recently stolen for her. The headline of the article reads: “Long lost Mycenaean gold ornaments anonymously returned to museum after being stolen more than five years ago.” He quickly scrolls through the article before researching some of the other objects he has retrieved for her and the story is pretty much always the same: anonymously returned, mysteriously donated.

He laughs quietly as all the dots start to connect. He had never asked her what she was doing with all the pieces she kept asking him to find, he had always given for grated that either she was keeping them or selling them. It had never crossed his mind that she was bringing them back to the rightful owners and places, back to where they belonged to. And “why” is a question he would really like to ask her, but knows he can not anymore.

“Remember it’s only a recon,” Sully’s voice reaches him through the earpiece. “Let’s try to keep a low profile.”

The charity ball and auction event has drawn a big crowd, which makes things mucheasier for them. That is, until Sam sees her—lost at the edge of everybody else and beautiful.

He should avoid her, he knows that much, but somehow that doesn’t translate well in his actions. She looks taken aback—rightfully so—when he greets her. And they talk for a moment and he asks her to dance and they are so close—he holds one of her hands, touches her back—and she feels so real and so exposed and so, _so_ undeniable.And he is not exactly stupid, so he knows that she has some sort of attraction to him, but he has never allowed himself to see how much till this evening. So Sam does—for once in his life—the adult thing to do and tries to talk her out of it. But then she kisses him and all the rest is forgotten.

He worships her body that night and worships it every night after that. The softness of her skin, the beauty of her curves and of her lines. He imprints everything he can in his memory, from the taste of her to the sounds she makes when he gives her pleasure, how her nose wrinkles when she laughs to the sensation of her fingers on his tattered skin. And before Sully gets in so much trouble that even Nate is willing to leave retirement to help him out and before Sam realizes he needs to leave her behind, he has this feeling at the edge of departing, that those perfect days he has been able to spend with her have been just an intermission, a quiescency from all he has to expect from life.

So he kisses her goodbye and comes back knowing that he has to betray her to help Sully, because somebody wants either Sully’s life or the necklace she posses and Sam can not figure out how to ask for it, how to explain it to her, how to make it sounds like this hasn’t been his plan all along. Truth is, he is so scared to lose her that he prefers to lose her on his terms.

But that one night after he is back, he shuts his brain down and loves her like nothing is different or more complicated than before. That one night she offers to show him the necklace he needs to steal form her, but Sam stalls.He doesn’t think of Sully, he doesn’t think of what it would do to Nate if anything would happen to him—he just thinks about her and himself and the necessity of few more days. Few more memories. A little more time to memorize her skin and how her voice sounds like and how she smiles to him and how it feels to have her in his life. How she pronounces his name in a laugh or when she is thinking about something else. How she pronounces it when he makes her come or when she is tired. So he kisses his way down and around her body, he charts and maps everything he can about her. The words she prefers to use, the tone of her voice in the morning and late in the evening. What her eyes look like is sunny days, what makes her laughs. Details, has he to be truthful, he already knows, but that he is not tired to revisit.

And then he steals the necklace from her and that’s the end.


	3. A Prayer for the Fallen

_“Animum debes mutare, non_ _caelum.”_

“You must change your disposition, not the sky.”

Seneca, _Moral Letters to Lucilius_

2 Years Later

She runs. When just running is not enough, she boxes. She started after coming back from a month of escaping the city, her house and everything in it that reminded her of Sam. It didn’t work, it didn’t help.

So, running. So, boxing. A year into it she has three fingers broken and healed, an ankle that randomly still bothers her and a knee that let her painfully know when it’s about to rain. Sam still haunts her. A degree less, maybe, but a times she wonders how much of that degree is wishful thinking.

Sully calls her somewhere at the beginning of the second year. She has never talked to the man before, so she is completely unprepared. He explains, she listens. He also tells her that he doesn’t expect her to do anything with the account she just heard—he just wants her to know. So she knows and she doesn’t promise anything. What she does, though, is changing her phone number the very same day.

In the middle of year two, at the end of a spring that promises to transition into a glorious summer, she meets Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross for the first time. They start to work for her but the terms are heavily changed. They don’t know her real name, they meet only to get the assignments or to exchange artifacts for payments and never at her house. They are quick, professional and excellent at what they do, but above all they don’t ask questions and they don’t want to know her just as much as she doesn’t want to know them.

“The charity ball is supposed to end at midnight,” she explains to Chloe in regard to the latest job she is offering to Nadine and her. “The auction is set to start after that, in the smaller ballroom of the mansion. That should keep the guests distracted enough for you to explore the house, I presume.”

“I’m sure Nadine can figure out the security and I can find your painting,” Chloe replies as Nadine, sitting next to her, nods in agreement.

“No problem at all.”

“Where the mansion is located?” Chloe asks picking up the folder with the information about the job. “Ah,” she then pauses reading the address on one of the papers. “The Rosecliff Estate.”

It’s just a moment, but she catches something silently exchanged between the two women in front of her—something that they know and that she doesn't—but Chloe recovers swiftly and offers her a smile. “No problem at all.”

And of all the cracks that Sam left in her, this is one of those she resents the most. She can’t trust anyone anymore and even the most innocent details become quickly suspects.

So she smiles one of her most convincing smiles and makes a mental note to get a ticket to charity ball after all, and go and keep an eye on the situation for herself.

The night of the charity, when the table collapses and the pyramid of champagne glasses comes crashing down with it, a collective gasp fills the ballroom.In the silence that follows everybody is still so startled that they can only stare as few objects make their way rolling on the floor silently leaking smoke. Nobody moves and then everybody seems to move at the same time.

The sudden cacophony of screams and agitation pins her on the spot until somebody bumps into her shoulder. She looks around for Chloe and Nadine, but she is unable to locate them. She is not sure if this is part of their plan—it seems unlikely, they are generally much more clean and invisible than this—but she turns around anyway to make her way towards the exit. Too many people are trying to escape and she is constantly pushed or crushed against someone else. A woman shoves her out of the way and she is about to lose her balance, but somebody catches her by the elbow and moves her to the side and through the people to a relatively more calm hallway.

Like that, Samuel Drake is back in her life.

“You okay?” he asks searching her face.

She is so taken aback that she can only nod. But even if she could put together an answer, the loud noise of an explosion somewhere in the house seems to shake the whole mansion and a couple of the windows close to them explode in a million little pieces.

“Shit,” Sam says through his teeth, his hand a little bit tighter around her elbow as he starts to pull her towards a direction that seems absolutely random to her, but obviously not to him.

People around them run and scream even more frantically now and yet he seems to easily find his way through this river of bodies.

“The front door is in the opposite direction,” she points out short of breath as he steers her toward the back of the building.

“I know,” Sam replies turning a corner and then another in hallways and rooms that are empty and with only an echo of the panic that is filling the main corridor.

He opens a door to a studio and then a French door that leads them outside, on a small patio on one of the sides of the house. “Where is your car?” he asks her with urgency.

“I came with a taxi,” she replies quietly, still too shocked to really be able to process anything but fear in that moment.

“I’ll take you to the main road and find you a taxi, so you can make it home safe.”  
It’s not an offer, it’s a decision made by him—and something snaps in her.

She shakes his hand off her elbow and starts to walk away. “I can take care of that myself.”

Sam curses under his breath as he quickly reaches her. “This is not the time. I just want to make sure you are out of here safe.”

“And since when do you care about my safety?”

She knows it’s childish, but the remark just leaves sharply her mouth before she can stop it.

He starts to say something, but the mansion’s main gates are finally visible and she picks up her pace. Not that she can leave him behind, but at least she can avoid to listen to his voice, as his words are lost in the noise of the people quickly leaving the place.And yet, one of his hands reaches for her wrist and she is forced to stop. Sam opens his mouth to say something, but two men show up from around the corner and as they see him, they start to run towards him.

“Fuck. Go. Now!” he says releasing her wrist.

It takes her a moment to do as he says, but when she starts moving, she doesn’t stop until she is at the gates. There, she pauses a moment to search for Sam, but he is not anywhere to be found anymore. Nor are the two men that were after him. And of all the things that could keep her sane in that moment, the only thing that for some reason does so is a simple thought. _They weren’t carrying guns._ Which she knows it translates into ‘Sam will be safe’, but she really doesn’t have the strength right now to admit that she still cares for him.

Once she gets to her house, she runs to her bedroom on the second floor, changes in her usual clothes and starts to quickly put together on overnight bag. She doesn’t stop to think, she _can’t_ stop to think. She has no clue where she is going, but it has to be away from here—from him and his chaos.

She almost yelps when one of the windows opens and Sam jumps into her room.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Sam raises both arms. “Just checking on you.”

And dear God, she just wants to scream at him so bad right now. Instead she looks away, her hands fisted up. “I’m fine. You can go.”

He doesn’t. “You are bleeding,” he says taking a step towards her, his hand reaching to her arm.

She instinctively steps back not allowing him to touch her and for an instant the shadow of some passing hurt runs through his face.

She didn’t even realize that she cut herself—it must have been when the windows at Rosecliff had shattered—but it’s only superficial and it’s not bleeding anymore. Just a red halo around yet another wound.

“I just…” he says with a note of sadness in his voice that she doesn’t know what to do with.

“No. No _just_.” She shakes her head, tries to find words that are fighting to be left buried inside. “I’ve been drowning,” she finally says with a quiet bitterness. “Since you left me. This two years, every day I felt like I’ve been drowning. A little more every day, lost in memories and the fact that, no matter what, I still missed you all the time. But I’m tired now. So _fucking_ tired of all of it. So, Samuel Drake, if you have something to say, say it now because this is your last chance.”

Sam looks away, hides whatever he is thinking in the penumbra of her room. The silence stretches a little longer between the two them, but then he starts talking, his voice low and serious. It’s not a justification what he strings together, but rather a _mea culpa_ in the form of a story Sully already cared to share with her, words threaded together so carefully and that Sam recites so naturally, that it makes her think he must have carried them with him for quite a while.

So, here he is again. This man that looks like the same man she lost two years ago.

This Samuel Drake that took so much from her and still does. The forever broken, the first to be abandoned, the one to do the abandoning. The one of the bad decisions and regrets and sacrifices in the name of a younger brother that he needed to bring up pretty much alone. The lover, the liar, a map of half healed wounds and marks and wrinkles.

The always unwanted, like the pieces in her private collection.

She is not sure if he is waiting for an absolution that she doesn’t know she can give him, if he hopes for that, or if him resting the truth for her to pick it’s just his way to atone.

Nor is she sure what she should say.

_It’s okay?_ It’s not. _I understand?_ She doesn’t.

So she closes her bag and looks at him one last time. “I have to go.”

“Where?” he asks at the edge of uneasiness.

“Not sure yet.”  
Silence, again. It fractures her a little inside.

She knows she needs to close this—whatever _this_ is—and she is about to, but the doorbell ringing downstairs takes the space of that ending.

She shares a confused look with Sam.

“Are you expecting someone?” he asks tensing.

“No,” she replies nervously.

“Turn off the light in the room,” he instructs her in a whisper as he approaches the window he came in through.

In the sudden darkness she can’t see him, but can hear him just fine.

“Shit.” And then, “shit. Shit. _Shit._ ”

She makes her way to him and looks outside. It takes her a moment to see what Sam saw. Her front gate has been forcibly opened.

“Damn assholes,” Sam whispers, “I thought I lost them, they must have followed me here.”

“Who?” she asks trying to hide the mounting alarm out of her voice.

“I’ll explain you later. What are the others way out, besides the front door?”

“The kitchen door in the back,” she lists quickly, “and the French doors in the main living room. They open on the side.”

“Won’t do,” replies Sam shaking his head. He looks discreetly outside the window and then turns to her. “We need to go out from here.”

“The window? But, how? I can’t. I mean, I really don’t—”

He takes her face between his hands and makes her look at him. “You can. I promise. It’s not hard. You just have to use the trellis on the side of the window.”

She hesitates a moment, but the doorbell rings again and she has no choice. “Okay.”

“I’ll go first. Just do as I do. We need to be quiet.” He makes her look at him again. “You’ve got this.”  
And for now, she decides, it’s all she will tell herself. True or not, if Sam believes in her, she can as well.

She watches him as he carefully climbs out of the window and then down the trellis, making it look so easy. As he jumps silently on the ground, he looks around a moment before gesturing her to come. Her hands are shaking a little as she tries to imitate his movements, mounting the sill and finding the trellis. She holds her breath for a moment as she hears the structure creaking under her, but without time to waste she starts to move down trying to ignore the noises.Halfway through, as she feels she is getting used to the movements, one of the pieces breaks under her foot and she loses her grip, her hands scratching badly as she tries to grasp something. She catches another piece of the trellis and bites down her throat the fear.

“Are you okay?” she hears Sam asking in a worried whisper.

“Yes,” she replies, her voice trembling just a little.

She starts moving again, as carefully and silently as possible, until she finally feels Sam’s hand closing around her waist and helping her down.

“You did great,” he says with a quick smile. “Now we have to be even more quiet. Let’s go.”

She nods and follows him through her yard, from dark corner to dark corner, in a path towards the perimeter walls of her property that he seems to know as well as the palm of his hand.

He suddenly stops her and motion to hide behind a bush, just as a couple of flashlights cut the night with blades of brightness. Two men are walking around her house, scanning around looking—she can only imagine—for Sam.

As soon as they are far away enough, Sam nods to her to follow him again. Thankfully the wall is not too far away and as they reach it, he stops in front of a big cement vase that has been moved against it.

“Climb on the top of this,” he says, “and from there I’ll help you to reach the top of the wall. You’ll have to jump down to the other side. I’ll be right behind you. My bike is hidden at the edge of the forest on the other side of the road.”

She does as he instructed her and as she touches the ground on the other side of the wall and Sam follows almost immediacy after, he quickly guides her towards his bike. He takes his helmet and put it on her, tightening under her chin.

“What about you?”

“I’ll be alright.”

He pushes the bike out of the hiding spot and into the main road, climbing on it and making space for her.

“When I turn it on, it will attract attention,” he whispers. “We will need to move fast, so I’ll need you to hold tight. Got it?”

“Got it,” she replies latching her arms around him.

And then there is no time for thinking or preparing or hoping, because Sam starts the bike—and it sounds so incredibly loud in the quiet of the night—and all she seems she can do is holding her breath.

There is a brief moment in which, as they quickly leave behind her house, she thinks things may not get that bad. Then, reflected in the bike’s mirror she sees the lights of a car quickly covering the distance between them.

“Sam!”

“I know, I know!”

He starts to take curves at such angles that, if her brain would be able to process anything right now, it would leave her marveling. But when the sound of the first shots reach them, all she can do is close her eyes and try not to panic. Sam swears loudly enough for her to hear and takes a sharp curve to the left, into a smaller street that slows down the car just marginally, as it goes crashing against the corner of a building before it goes back chasing them. The shots come back as well, one close enough to graze Sam’s left arm. He swears again, turns into a bigger road, drifts and speeds in the opposite direction of their chasers. They fire so many shots she wonders how they haven’t been hit yet or if she is just in too much panic to realize it.Her head is starting to feel light as Sam takes another sharp turn, this time in a street too small for the car to follow them. As they emerge from the opposite side, Sam crosses the double lane road without even looking, dodging cars coming in both the opposite directions, quickly entering an underground parking lot so quiet that, after the last few minutes, it feels almost surreal.

He parks near some cars and for an instant they sit still, catching their breath. She tries to get down the bike, but as soon her feet touch ground her legs start to shake badly, her head feels lighter than ever, and it’s only because Sam is immediately there to catch her that she doesn’t fall on the ground.

He delicately has her lean against one of the walls and removes the helmet from her head, his hands holding her face.

“Are you okay?”

She can only nod.

“Stay with me, okay? We are almost there.”

He holds her as they move through a door, up some staircases into the lobby of an apartment building and then into an elevator.Mercifully the apartment they need to reach is close by and as Sam locks the door behind them, waves of nausea hit her again and again.

“Bathroom?” she manages to ask painfully.

Sam points at a door and she barely makes it to the toilet before whatever was in her stomach comes out. She rests the head on her folded arms and Sam, behind her, puts a wet towel that feels like heaven on the back of her neck.

“I’m so sorry,” he says in a quiet kind of somber.

She wobbly stands up, washes her face and rinse her mouth. She looks at Sam in the reflection of the mirror in front of her and manages to smile a little smile.“It’s the guys who were shooting at us that should apologize.”

They lock eyes for an instant and she starts to giggle and then laugh and so does Sam, in that way you do when adrenaline and fear and nervousness have complete control of your reactions.

“Can you walk?” Sam asks when they both have calmed down.

“I think so.”

He follows her to the sofa anyway, making sure she is really okay before going back to the bathroom to reappear with a first aid kit.

“Can I see your hands?” he asks sitting next to her.

“You are bleeding, too.”  
“It can wait. Now, may I?”

“I can—”

“I _know_ you can,” Sam interrupts her a bit bluntly, “but I would really like to do it. _Please_.”

She hesitates an instant longer before giving him her hands, though not out of stubbornness, but simply because she feels ridiculously embarrassed. She can not even explain it to herself. She knows him, the sound of his laugh and they way he always stresses certain words, the feel of his skin under her hands and what his body can do to hers. And yet, here she is, acting like this is the first time that Sam holds her hands.

“So. This is going to sting a little,” he warns her before starting to clean her wounds and scratches.

She actually welcomes the pain, it keeps her mind focused on other things. “Who were those men?”

Sam doesn’t reply immediately. “People that work for someone who doesn’t know how to lose.” It seems he already knows that it’s not going to be enough of an answer for her, because he sighs and continues. “Jonas Nielsen, CEO of Q Incorporated, COO of Void Coms, philanthropist and collector by day, aspirant thief by night, massive asshole all the time. Sully and I had this job, we needed to steal a very interesting _globus cruciger_ tonight at the charity ball. And we did—a perfectly clean in and out until Nielsen, who had his eyes on it as well, decided to ruin the evening for everybody, because he isn’t good at this like us. Honestly, though, we should have expected from him.”

“So,” she says trying to make sense of what he just said, “you knew that this person was most likely willing to kill you and you went for it anyway?”

Sam shrugs. “It comes with this job. It’s part of this life.”

She lets the words sink in for a moment. “And you like it? This life, I mean.”

He mulls over her question. “Sometimes.”

They both fall into silence as he finishes taking care of her hands and moves to the cut on her arm.

“So…what will you do now?”

Sam quickly looks at her, before going back to her arm. “I will call Sully tomorrow morning and go from there. Done,” he announces then in a light tone, “as good as new.”

He starts to collect the bits and pieces that need to be trashed and closes the kit. “What you need to do now, though, is sleep. The bedroom is next to the bathroom.”

He leaves the couch turning off the lights around the apartment as he goes, leaving her to stare at her hands, as if there is an answer in there to a question that she not sure she knows.

She slowly stands up and reaches the bedroom, but at the threshold she stills, suddenly feeling seven again, scared of the darkness, of a storm that rolled in during the night, of a nightmare that woke her up alone.

“Sam?” Her voice travels the distance between them, a note of insecurity in it. She can barely see him, but knows he is looking at her. “Would you…could you sleep with me tonight?”

In the quiet of the room everything holds its breath.

“Of course.”

As they lay down carefully avoiding to touch each other, she wonders what she will remember in the years to come of this night. The chase? The bullets? Sam’s tending to her hands? Sam’s love for a life she will probably never understand?

But then Sam moves one arm and carefully slides it under her neck, pulling her to him. He gently takes one of her hands and brings it to his mouth, leaving a kiss on the injured fingers. “I’m sorry,” he simply says.

She nests her face closer to his body. “Me too.”

For him, for her, for a peculiar kind of damage they both seem to carry within themselves.

And so she knows what she will remember of this evening, whenever she will think about it.

Sam’s broken pieces and her broken pieces together—at least for one night.


	4. Apocrypha of a Thief

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who stopped by to read this weird story, it really means a lot to me.

_“Quomodo fabula, sic vita non quam diu, sed quam bene acta sit, refert. Nihil ad rem pertinet, quo loco desinas. Quocumque voles desine; tantum bonam clausulam inpone.”_

“As is a story, so is life: what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is. It is not important at what point you stop. Stop wherever you will—only make certain it is with a good ending.”

Seneca, _Moral Letters to Lucilius_

There is this song that plays quietly on the radio as the aroma of coffee fills the apartment in the morning and she emerges from the bedroom. A tune simple and understated like her eyes still filled with sleep and a measure of captivating uneasiness.Her bracelets are gone and he is not surprised at all, their absence a small reminder of the pain the he caused to her.

She joins him to the little island of the kitchenette, still in the clothes of the night before, her eyes traveling discreetly through the things in this new apartment that he hasn’t had the chance just yet to mess up as the old one.

“Coffee?” he offers.

“Yes, please. Thank you.”

“How are your hands?”

She opens and closes them a couple of times. “Sore, but not too bad.”

“Good.”

She hides her face in a sip of coffee, from which she emerges with her eyes closed, enjoying the tender light of the morning on her face.

The music from the radio takes care of the silence and he takes care of recording details he didn’t notice earlier. A new ring on one of her fingers, a little less color on her face. Some hollowness in her cheeks, her hair maybe a little shorter than it used to be.

“Did you talk to Sully?” she asks calling him out of his reverie.

“Yes,” he replies, a little uneasy from being caught staring at her. “We will meet in three days. I’ll need to take a plane this evening.”

Which is probably less gentle that he would like to put it, but there it is.

She plays with a pen forgotten on the island, her expression neutral. “I’ll take a shower, if you don’t mind, and then I’ll go as well. My train leaves in few hours.”

He is surprised. Mostly, by the way her words hurt. She is still here, in front of him, and he is already missing her.

“You have a ticket?”

“I bought it online when I woke up.”

He knows that technically it’s not his business, but there is this other part of him—the one that registers and constantly reminds him of details about her—that part of him pushes him to ask, to know, to collect more.“Where are you going?”

He is not sure she will reply, but she does. “Upstate. I have a friend I can stay with for few days, before deciding what to do next.”

“Good,” he says and it sounds flat even to his ears. “I can take you to the train station whenever you are ready and make sur—”

She shakes her head and that’s enough to stop him. “I think I should go by myself. If those men from last night are still out looking, they are either looking for you or you and me. It would be less risky if I go alone.”

“But…” Sam starts but doesn’t finish. He knows she is right. So, instead, he holds a sigh and fishes a cigarette out of his pack to fidget with. “Alright.”

“So, I’ll take that shower, then, if you don’t mind.”

“Please do,” he replies picking up her empty mug and taking it to the sink, not so much to rinse it but because he feels he needs to start getting used to not seeing her. “You can take one of my t-shirts, if you want to change.”

“Thank you,” he hears her reply. Few steps around the apartment, then the bathroom door closing softly shortly after.

The mug abandoned in the sink, Sam goes to the window to smoke. His elbows rest on the sill as the first drag hits him and makes his head feel a little lighter, his heart a little more lost. Birds sing somewhere, the air is heavy with the smell of the river nearby and the sky is a shade of blue that should be reserved for happier days.The noise from the shower comes softly and stays in the background like the shadow of a memory. He looks at his hands as they remind him of how she felt sleeping close to him again—and a chuckle escapes his mouth realizing he is only making a fool out of himself pretending that anything in him forgot anything about her.

The door of the bathroom opens again and Sam lets the cigarette fall down to the street below. A quick prayer appears and disappears on his lips, before he turns to look at her.

And so, there she is. This young curious creature. Slightly awkward and quite pretty in his t-shirt, a bit too big for her, half tucked in and half not in a careless way, her hair still damp, her cheeks flushed.

She stares at him the way she always stared at him, giving away very little of her thoughts. “I should go,” she says but she doesn’t move.

It’s up to him to start this goodbye, then. The fact that he doesn’t necessarily want to doesn’t change the fact that he has to.

Through the living room, he reaches the door and opens it for her. He sees them passing briefly through her face, the questions, some words that will stay unspoken, doubts and something that could have been so full of grace and instead it just became a little too complicated, too tattered.

“Thank you,” she says pausing momentarily. “For helping me last night,” she then adds like an afterthought. “Please, take care.”

“Of course. Would you please let me know when you get to your friend?”

“Sure,” she replies with something that feels like a secondhand smile. A last “bye”, then, and she disappears in the elevator and out of his life.

The message doesn’t arrive that evening, nor the day after.

The message arrives two days later.

He starts reading it, stops and starts again.

_A lesson for you, Mr Drake. When you take something you really want from someone else, they may take something you really want from you in return. An exchange in 48 hours. Details will be texted. On an entertaining note, how curious that she doesn’t have your number on her phone and yet she remembers it by heart._

The photo comes after. Sam’s brain seems to stop functioning for few long seconds, his eyes incapable to focus on the whole picture, recording instead details in a scattered manner. There is blood on one of her arms. More blood on her face. A sleeve of the t-shirt is ripped. A gash on the jeans by one of her knees. Her hands are tied to a chair, behind her back. She is leaning forward, the rope around her chest the only thing preventing her from falling, since she is passed out.

Rage boils up so quickly. His hands shake and he does everything in his power not to throw the phone at the wall in front of him. Instead, he calls Nate and Sully and contact people that owe him favors, as ideas are quickly formed and quickly discarded. By the end of that day, though, when he receives the message with the location and time for the exchange, he has a plan.

Even so and even with details that need to be defined and fine-tuned, with things that need to be arranged and orchestrated, even so all he can think of it’s the blood, the ropes, the pain.If life so far taught him anything at all, it’s how to be patient, methodical, deliberate. And yet now, he doesn’t know what to do with that. Now, he just wants to find Nielsen and kill him.

The factory is empty, the afternoon and the city left outside.

In his earpiece Sam listens to Nielsen’s man falling one after the other in the quiet traps carefully set up for them all around the perimeter of the building. So, when Nielsen appears with her and two men, Sam knows those are the only ones remaining.The footsteps echo in the void of the building, theirs rhythmical, hers slightly dragged. She is not tied up anymore, but the blood is still there dried and darker. She looks at him—the rips, tears and damage alive—and he can see hope and fear battling on her face.

“Mr. Drake, such an unfortunate way to meet,” Nielsen says with an amused tone of voice that makes Sam want to punch those words back into his mouth. “But you surely know better than me how sometimes in this line of work niceties need to be put aside.”

“How about you shut the fuck up and let her go,” hisses Sam.

Nielsen had the audacity to chuckle. “The frustration of wanting something that’s within your grasp and being unable to get it—not so much entertaining, isn’t it? But,” he raises one hand to stop Sam’s next words, “I’ll be a gentleman and meet you in the middle. Do you have the _globus_ with you, I presume?”

“ _Gentleman_. Right,” he replies caustic, taking out from the pocket of his jacket the orb and cross.

“Wonderful,” says Nielsen beckoning one of his two men. “Mr. Smith here will take your lovely friend to you. You can have her as soon as you give him the _globus_. And let’s keep this civilized, shall we? I presume you wouldn’t want anything bad happen to her.”

Sam nods as Sully’s voice reaches him through the earpiece. “Ready when you are, Sam.”

The man grabs her by the elbow and harshly makes her walk, a gun pressed to her side. Her hands are shaking and she looks ready to pass out, and it takes everything Sam posses not to cover the distance between them and take her out of the grasp of Nielsen’s man.

When they are finally close, Sam offers the orb to him but holds it until the man shoves her in his arms. Only then, when he can hold and protect her, he lets the _globus_ go.

“I have to say I’m a little disappointed, Mr. Drake,” Nielsen says taking the orb from his man and examining it under the dim light of the factory. “I thought you would at least put a little bit of a fight.”

“As I’ve been told once,” Sam replies, slowly stepping back with her, “sometimes you have to choose what you are going to keep and what you are going to let go.”

Sully’s voice reaches him again. “Ready to have these assholes go to sleep?”

“With pleasure,” replies Sam under his breath.

The clicking noise is barely audible, but what’s unmissable is the white smoke leaking out of the orb. Nielsen looks initially confused and then furious. “What hav—”

He doesn’t get the chance to finish the phrase, because him and his men fall on the ground unconscious.

“What was that?” she asks Sam as he hurries her out of the factory.

“Methoxyflurane. Also know as sleeping gas,” he replies as he locks the door of the building. “In that concentration they will be out for hours.”

“But how…?”

“All good, kid?” Sully’s voice asks in the earpiece before he can reply to her question.

 _Kid_. That’s a word Sully generally reserves for Nate but without knowing why, Sam for once doesn’t mind being the one addressed that way. “All good, Sullivan. We are heading to the car now.”

“Take care, okay?”

“I will.” He removes the earpiece and catches her confused look. “Talking to Sully,” he replies showing her the little device. “He was the one behind triggering the gas.”

He guides her through the backyard of the factory to where his car is waiting for them. “See,” he finally replies to her question, “Sully and I were after the orb not so much for the orb itself, but for what it contained. _Globus_ are generally hollow spheres, but this one—once you figured out how—this one you could open. I had one of Nielsen’s little gas toys from the other evening, so I just called in a favor. Once the thing was filled with sleeping gas, we simply put it inside the orb and close it. Sully had the remote to trigger it from a distance, once you were back with me.”

She closes her eyes, inhaling and exhaling deeply. “Jesus Christ, Sam, that was…”

He steals a side-glance at her. “I’m sorry, this is all my fault. If I hadn’t…if I wasn’t…”

He lets the phrase die, finding too complicated to put in a handful of words all he shouldn’t have had or shouldn’t have been.

She looks silently outside the side window for few long instants, but then her hand finds his arm. “Thank you for saving me.”

And he would like to laugh at that, because of course, always. _Always_. But he keeps his thoughts for himself instead, and keeps driving through the city and through the afternoon casting here and there a glance at her.

“Where are we going?” she eventually asks.

“Away from here for now. A place up in the mountains, it will take few hours to get there, but it’s safe. You can sleep in the meantime, if you want.”

She is still looking outside the side window but he sees her nod, closing her eyes and making herself a little more comfortable in the seat.

Some of her hair is stuck in the dried blood, her lips are a little cracked, the halos of some bruises are starting to show up under her skin—but her hand, slid off from his arm, rests on his leg, where he covers it with his. And the guilt may come later, but for now this is enough.

The log cabin appears at the last moment, a little thing tucked in the woods, barely visible in the dying glow of the day. The valley below holds a small town, the lights of the houses winking at the sky.Inside, as he carries the few things that he packed, she moves carefully in the small space in that way she has of absorbing and observing new things. There isn’t really that much to see in this one small open space where the only internal walls are those around a bathroom. But she looks nonetheless, because he knows that’s what she does. Takes in details, compiles them like a collector of memories.

“Elena said you may need these,” he interrupts her study, offering an overnight bag carrying some clean clothes.

She seems surprised for a moment. “Thank you.”

She disappears inside the bathroom as he starts a fire in the fireplace that dominates the room. It softly starts to rain outside and the sound weaves with the one from the shower. When she comes out the blood is gone but the bruises show more, and yet she offers him a smile and an apology. “Sorry it took so long.”

The water on his skin feels like a blessing, the hope for a small grace. The mirror is fogged when he is done, but Sam doesn’t wipe it. He prefers this unfocused, more forgiving reflection of himself. He tucks a towel around his waist and leaves the bathroom, finding her sitting on the sofa, one hand under her chin, her eyes lost in the darkness of a window.

She turns when she hears him, the smile quickly gone and replaced by something familiar as her eyes travel along his body. A variation of a certain kind of craving he remembers from when things were less complicated between the two of them.

And he knows this is possibly an incredible mistake.

And he knows she is most likely just indulging a passing sentiment.

And he knows he is not.

And yet.

She quietly stands up and approaches him, her eyes on his unfaltering. Her hands find his chest, her fingertips caressing his skin as they slowly make a path down his stomach, teasing the boundaries of the towel. She stops for a moment, not out of hesitation but to give him the time to say something, should he want to. But he doesn’t. How can he, when he wants this, wants _her_ so badly.

She gingerly removes her clothes, naked for him to see, and takes off his towel as her eyes don’t leave his, as she takes his hands and bring them to her body.

One of her hands closes around his cock, forcing him to close his eyes and hold his breath for a second.

“Sam?” she calls him back to her.

“Yes.”

“I’d really like you to fuck me now,” she whispers as her mouth find the skin of his neck and her hand moves slowly up and down.

It’s almost too much for him.

But then she stops and guides him to the sofa, where she makes him sit. She doesn’t wait, she doesn’t waste time. She straddles him, her hand back around his cock and she guides it inside her and pushes herself down, a long moan escaping her lips as he forgets for a brief moment how to breath.

And she fucks him there on the sofa and he gives her everything she wants, everything she is looking for. It’s not tender, it’s not soft, it’s not gentle. But it’s rough and satisfying and it’s love the way she needs it tonight and the way he wants it too. Her hands on him, his mouth on hers, the moans, the way her neck stretches and her head tilts up as she purses pleasure, this young saint in bliss he is devoted to, who carries within her the knots and the unraveled threads that make them who they are together.

It’s not perfect. They, even less so.

But he loves it. And he hopes—good God, he _hopes_ —she loves it, too.

Later in bed, after another opportunity to trace her body all over again, they lie close facing each other, her fingertips discovering new scars on his body, a distraction on his skin as she listens to a story he is telling her. Her soft laugh another welcomed interference.

“You are joking,” she says.

“I swear I’m not.”

“But the temple…and the treasure…I mean…” She gives up with a laugh and for a second or two her fingers gently tap a short rhythm on his arm. “Tell me another story.”  
“Another?”

She nods.

“Shouldn’t you get some rest?” he asks trying to figure her out.

“It worked perfectly fine for Scheherazade and Shahryar,” she replies in a smile.

“ _Ah_. So this is what we are doing?”

She laughs softly again. “I just don’t want tomorrow to come just yet.”  
There, something changes slightly in her expression. She lowers her gaze, a bit of anxiety surfacing the same way it would when you realize you have said something that was supposed to be a secret.

Her eyes come back to his, searching for something. Something, Sam hopes, she can easily find in his. So, he pulls her a bit closer and holds her there.

“Another story, then,” he simply says watching her smile return.

Because—as he learned decades ago, when life became a ruin that he had to make surewouldn’t fall on Nate—love sometimes is in what you say and what you do and how you care. And sometimes it’s in the things you don’t say and those sketched in-betweens. And other times it’s simply in giving someone one more story.

She holds her tears, two days later at the train station.

Sam holds his words, things he can not promise because he simply can’t.

Something like regret sits in his stomach and bitters his mouth as he watches the train take her away. He tells himself he did it for her—what use, after all, of saying certain words, exposing certain feelings, when you can not do anything about it anyway? But that evening, on a plane to London where sleep forgot to board, alone with his thoughts and Sully, he considers the idea of starting to be more honest with himself.

He talks to her as regularly as he can, sends her photos of things he thinks she will find amusing or interesting, takes note of details he wants to tell her and he may forget. He thinks of her often. Not in the hours of pain or loneliness or thrill. Nor after another chase, another brush with death or another last second escape.

It’s in the moments of calm and of beauty that he is still lucky to witness that he is reminded of her. London wet with rain in the early quiet hours of the morning. The wide ribbon of the Danube viewed from the walls of Buda Castle. The overwhelming life in the marketplace in old Algiers. The writing on a wall in some little town in Armenia that seems to be there just for him.

_(Between what is said and not meant and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.)_

He never quite understood Nate’s decision to leave this life behind and he can not honestly say he completely does now. But he misses her, and misses her in the same way he missed being free during those fifteen years in prison.But the days pass and so do the countries Sully and him visit, following clues and traces, every week somewhat closer to the end. He justifies it that way—seven more days and they will be done. And then those seven days come and go and they are not quite there yet and so, one more week. And one more week. And one more week.

He flirts with women, but sleeps alone at night.

There is always something in all of them, small details that remind Sam of her but that, in the end, simply force him to see none of them are her.

On the last phone call he is able to make, she tells him she is changing house. Her old place, her old town don’t do anymore.

“Send your new address to Nate, okay?”

She chuckles, her voice a little granular courtesy of the poor reception. “I’ll do you one better.”

He is about to ask what she means, but the unstable connection drops. A moment later he receives a message. _Don’t ask. It’s a surprise._

And Sam chuckles, shakes his head and doesn’t ask.

Almost a month in hell follows. That’s the only way he can think of it. But somehow Sully and him survive and the job is finally done. And, for a change, they don’t have only bruises and cuts to prove it, but also some valuable souvenirs.

He didn’t tell her he was coming back—she is not the only one entitled to make surprises, after all—so when Sam lands at the airport, it’s Nate who picks him up.

In the car he hands to Sam an envelope with Nate’s address on it, that contains another envelope with Sam’s name. Inside, a small key keeps company to a folded piece of paper that, once unfolded, makes Sam laugh.

“What is it?” asks Nate trying to take a look.

Sam shows it to him.

“It’s that…a _map_?”

“I’m afraid so,” he replies beyond amused.

Nate laughs. “I really need to meet this girl of yours.”

Sam looks down at the map, rolling his brother’s words in his mind. _This girl of yours_. In truth, he doesn’t know if she is, if she sees herself like that. But he knows he is kinda tired of meaning and not saying and losing love in the process. And if deciphering this map of hers and find her it’s what it takes to prove himself, he is more than willing to go on this adventure.

He packs a light duffle bag, says goodbye to his brother and to a city that wasn’t his anyway to begin with and takes off with his bike. It takes him roughly three days to arrive in the general area of the map where she sketched the last clue. The hairpinned road ahead of him gracefully winds up around a mountain, taking him higher curve after curve.The air smells fresh, almost untouched and a bit chaotic with lush evergreen scents and the musty undertones of the undergrowth. The sky above him a promise of boundless immensity. The road only for him. And as he makes his way up Sam starts to see why, of all the places, she chose this.

On one side of the road, after one more turn, the gated stone archway appears like an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence. The masonry is old, the driveway gate not so much. It’s also closed and with no lock to pick, but it takes Sam only a moment to locate a key switch on the side of one of the two columns, the small key that came with the map already waiting in his hand.

The driveway takes him a little higher on the side of the mountain, where the view opens to the valley and a lake below and to such an expanse that makes everything feel possible. The lodge shows itself at the last minute, almost like a natural occurrence, another piece of the landscape, a thoughtful construction of lumber, stone and windows that not even the generous dimensions of the construction can take away from the sensation that it belongs here.

In front of the house, a circular driveway doubles as a scenic viewpoint and parking area, where Sam leaves his bike next to a well used Range Rover of the same shade of green of the deeper parts of the forests around the mountain.

Birds somewhere are welcoming him to this place with their songs. The wind blows gently. And somewhat not unlike her, life here is tumultuously everywhere, you can hear it, see it, scent it—and yet everything feels so quiet and peaceful.

The massive wooden doors at the front of the house invite him to nock, but there is no answer. So, more out of diligence than hope, Sam tries the handle and he’s surprised to find the door unlocked.He steps quietly in an open space of high ceilings and with a faint scent of lumber, where everything is airy and light and yet cozy. An instrumental tune plays softly from somewhere in the house and everything appears to be still.She is nowhere to be seen, but Sam catches the traces of her presence everywhere as he walks through the space. A jacket hanging on a coatrack, a pile of books on a coffee table, next to her laptop. A scarf forgotten on the back of a chair, a local newspaper and an empty mug on the island of the kitchen. The photos he sent her through the last months, printed and framed, scattered everywhere.

A double set of glass doors are open at the very end of the room, a curtain moving ever so slightly caught in some of the mountain breeze. The calmer wilderness of the back yard leaks in in the form of scents of flowers and pines trees and the chirping of the birds.

Sam finds himself moving quietly and carefully, like he would if he was to steal something. And he finds that in some manner he is, when he sees her and pauses at the threshold of the doors to look at her.

She is—not unfittingly—sitting like the first time he met her, lost in a book, in an outdoor chair, her legs crossed.

And of all he could think right now, it’s Father Duffy that somehow comes to Sam’s mind, years in the past, standing silently in front of a painting of the Virgin Mary in the old Saint Francis church, his hands locked together behind his back.

“Staring at it again, eh, Father?” Sam had called amused, without really meaning anything by it.

But Father Duffy had surprised him with a smile that even a fourteen years old Sam had easily read as sad and somewhat yearning.

“She reminds me of someone.” The words whispered not as a secret, but like a remorse. “Someone I liked.”

Surprised, Sam had stared at Father Duffy, curious to ask for more but not daring. So, instead, he had trained his eyes back to the painting, trying to imagine this girl from the past. “She must have been pretty.”

Father Duffy’s smile had changed, a chuckle escaping his mouth. “She was.”

“What happened to her?”

A pause. A deep breath, before letting it out. “It’s not so much what happened to her, but what happened to me.”

And there somehow, despite all his young and stupid stubbornness and the obstinate belief of knowing everything of the world when really he had known nothing at all, there somehow Sam had understood that what Father Duffy had referred to had nothing to do with him taking the cloth and choosing this life of service.Instead, it had been about a complicated part of his life that a teenager boy who was still trying to learn who he was couldn’t have possibly understood.

“In the future, Samuel Morgan,” Father Duffy had then called him out of his thoughts, “should you be lucky to find someone you like and love and likes you and loves you back, don’t mess it.”

Sam had laughed. “Do you call that luck, Father?”

Father Duffy had patted him on the shoulder, giving him another smile. “I call it more than luck, Samuel.”

So here, as Sam looks at her with his mind busy with memories of a pretty Virgin Mary and the sadness in Father Duffy’s smile, here he discovers that all those carefully crafted witty words he spent so much time putting together for this very occasion have vanished or disappeared.

And as something in her profile changes and she sits a bit straighter, and as he covers the distance that still separates them, Sam thinks he finally understood what Father Duffy meant by saying that something like this it’s more than luck.

Her smile when she sees him has nothing to do with him being lucky, nor being able to kiss her again and hug her and hold her until she laughs and tells him to let her go so she can look at him. There is no luck in the touch of her hands and how they find his face, her thumbs gently stroking his cheekbones. It’s not about luck the way she kisses him and the quiet, resting place that his mind seems always to find with her.

It’s about a kind of love that comes without a warning. It’s about peace and happiness and a particular type of freedom. And it’s about discovering that pretty things can grow in a life that feels more like a long lost, forgotten city.

So Sam wraps his arms around her waist and lifts her up, her forehead touching his.

“Hey, you,” she says softly. “I missed you.”

“Hey, you,” he replies smiling. “I love you.”


End file.
